At the request of his family who were eager to address problems inherent in the original design, Hicks Stone petitioned the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to approve a complete transformation of the townhouse that his father had designed in 1953. However, the Landmarks Commission disapproved of the work and discouraged Stone from proceeding to a public hearing. While the commission viewed the work unfavorably, the architectural critic of The New Yorker, Paul Goldberger, viewed the work in a different light saying that Hicks Stone had "produced a handsome modern design that relates to his father's earliest work."